Pneumatic rubber tires can conveniently be prepared by building previously compounded and shaped rubber components such as tread stock and sidewall stock onto a rubberized fabric carcass. The carcass includes an inner liner of rubber gum stock. The prepared tire is then shaped and cured by application of heat and pressure.
An inherent difficulty involved in such tire preparation involves the storage and identification of individual compounded components prior to their utilization.
It is important to appreciate that, once the rubber is compounded with various materials including a curative therefor, it becomes a tacky, chemically active, productive stock. It is designed to be cured upon application of heat, or elevated temperature. It must be used in a relatively short time or it becomes aged or degraded.
It is further important to appreciate that such compounded rubber components must be identified in some manner, usually by rubber compound, batch number and preparation date, so that they are not stored for too long a period before use and so they are built into the correct tire construction.
Such identification is often accomplished by loosely or releasably attaching or applying an identification tag to the compounded rubber component.
If such an identification tag should, by accident not be removed from its labeled rubber component, the tag could conceivably become embedded within the elements of the tire construction and become a foreign material to the tire which, after fabrication, shaping and curing of the tire, might not be readily visually detected.